Hermann Hesse

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Every healthy person must have a goal in life and that life must have content.

If I know what love is it is because of you.

You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue justice and understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair the awakened on the other side.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.

Eternity is a mere moment just long enough for a joke.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

In eternity there is no time only an instant long enough for a joke.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.

Solitude is independence.

The truth is lived, not taught.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

If you hate a person you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isnt part of ourselves doesnt disturb us.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran around freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to these people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid.

Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.

Everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.

Words can not express the joy of new life.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.